Intel Community Moves Towards Performance-Based Pay
The Director of National Intelligence last week issued several new Intelligence Community Directives (ICDs) that implement new community-wide personnel practices, including a performance-based compensation policy that rewards superior job performance.
The new payment policy “links performance-based pay increases and bonuses to individual accomplishments, demonstrated competencies, and contributions to organizational results.”
“Higher performance and greater contribution to mission should result in proportionally higher rewards for similarly-situated employees.”
The new payment and personnel policies, part of DNI J. Michael McConnell’s 100-day and 500-day plans, are intended to modernize the business practices of U.S. intelligence agencies and, implicitly, to make government service somewhat more competitive with intelligence contractors in the private sector.
The new personnel policies will also replace the standard government personnel grading system known as the General Schedule (GS) for all intelligence agency employees, except that senior officials at the GS-15 or higher grade are exempted.
The new IC Directives, all dated April 28, 2008, were released under the Freedom of Information Act. They include:
ICD 650, National Intelligence Civilian Compensation Program: Guiding Principles and Framework (pdf)
ICD 652, Occupational Structure for the Intelligence Community Civilian Workforce (pdf)
ICD 654, Performance-Based Pay for the Intelligence Community Civilian Workforce (pdf)
ICD 656, Performance Management System Requirements for Intelligence Community Senior Civilian Officers (pdf)
Copies of these and other IC Directives are available here.
No one will be surprised if we end up with a continuing resolution to push our shutdown deadline out past the midterms, so the real question is what else will they get done this summer?
Rebuilding public participation starts with something simple — treating the public not as a problem to manage, but as a source of ingenuity government cannot function without.
If the government wants a system of learning and adaptation that improves results in real time, it has to treat translation, utilization, and adaptation as core functions of governance rather than as afterthoughts.
Coordination among federal science agencies is essential to ensure government-wide alignment on R&D investment priorities. However, the federal R&D enterprise suffers from egregious siloization.